How to write your reflection for your CAS Activities 10/1/2010

1. Pre-Reflection: a. What goals do I hope to accomplish? b. Which learner objectives do you hope to meet? 2. Post-Reflection: a. Did you meet the goals you set out? b. Why or why not? c. What learner objectives did you meet? d. Why or why not? e. If you could do this activity again, what would you do differently? 3. Specifically. a. Increased awareness of strengths/weaknesses i. Did this activity humble you? ii. Boost your self confidence? iii. Why werent you aware of this strength/weakness before? iv. How do you feel now that youre aware of it? v. Why is it important for us to know our strengths? Our weaknesses? b. Undertaken new challenges: i. What was so challenging? ii. Why was it challenging? iii. Have you done anything similar before? iv. How did you overcome this challenge? v. If you didnt overcome it, why not and what will you do differently next time? vi. How do you feel about having undertaken this challenge? vii. Why is it important for you to undertake new challenges? c. Planned and initiated activities: i. How did you organize yourself? ii. Are you usually an organized person? d. How did any current skills you already have help you in the planning of this activity? i. Did you discover any skills you hadnt known or learned yet that you had to use for the planning and initiating of this activity? ii. What was harder? The planning or the initiating? Why? iii. Do you think planning or initiating anything in the future will be easier now/ iv. Why is it important to know how to plan and initiate activities? e. Worked collaboratively: i. Is working with others generally easy or hard for you? Why? ii. So, based on your answer to the above question, was this particular activity easy or hard for you to work with others? iii. Did you have to work with anyone difficult? How did you handle it? iv. Why is it important to be able to work collaboratively with others?

Showed perseverance and commitment: i. What made this activity difficult where perseverance or commitment was necessary? How did that make you feel? ii. Is it easy for you to commit to things? To be persistent? Why or why not? iii. Why is showing perseverance and commitment important? g. Engaged with issues of global importance: i. What were the issues? ii. Why are they important globally? How? Where? How did you know? iii. How does knowing about global issues contribute to your personal growth? iv. How does it make you feel now that you are aware of this global issue? v. How does your work in this CAS activity make you feel about that global issue? h. Consider ethical implications: i. Do you understand what ethics are? ii. How do you know if something is ethical? How did you learn that? iii. What ethical issues were involved in this activity? Explain. iv. Did the ethical issues affect you directly or indirectly? v. How did the issue make you feel? What was your opinion on this issue before this activity? Has it changed or stayed the same after this activity? vi. What could you do to increase the awareness of others about this issue? vii. Why is an ethical education important? i. Develop new skills: i. What new skills did I develop? ii. Why did you not have them before? iii. How could this skill be useful to you in the future? iv. How does having this new skill make you feel about yourself? v. Why is it important to learn new skills? 4. How did this activity build and part of the learner profile in me? What learner profile characteristics did I develop in this activity? Remember. Although its not about length, writing a few sentences is likely not going to be enough. Its more about quality than quantity, BUT, if you cant give me quality work in a small quantity, then your quantity can make up for your quality! The reflection is just as important as actually doing the activity and maybe even more so. If the activity served no purpose, then why on earth would you waste your time? CAS is supposed to be meaningful to you and about personal growth. The evidence of this growth is the reflection. Thats HOW you make it meaningful. Pick your activities accordingly! Reflections should be more like journal entries; more about emotions and thoughts than a description of the activity.

f.